The Darkness Review - AVClub

AVClub: Greg McLean is the new Tobe Hooper. The evidence is piling up faster than the bodies do in either man’s movies. McLean, an Aussie director who got his start back when the term “torture porn” was at peak overuse, made a name for himself with Wolf Creek, the most harrowing hick-horror rampage since, well, Hooper’s original Texas Chain Saw Massacre. For an encore, McLean then made a film, Rogue, about tourists devoured by a giant crocodile—which, of course, is also the plot of Eaten Alive, Hooper’s follow-up to his own brutal breakthrough. And when it came time to make a belated Wolf Creek sequel, what did McLean do but go bigger, gorier, and crazier, just like Hooper did when he finally got around to The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2. Now comes The Darkness, which officially ushers the younger director into his Poltergeist stage, complete with a suburban family harassed by spirits, a disrupted Native American burial ground, and a little kid drawn to a permeable portal between worlds. All that’s missing are the scares. Where’s a creepy clown doll when you need it?

I hear what you're saying about the film, and I had a feeling that would be the case when I saw who the director was and what the premise was, but I still want to watch it for myself because I love Radha Mitchell.